B.C. brewery creates bread beer from food waste

The beer is called Our Daily Bread. It’s brewed with bread that was originally destined for the landfill and supplied by a food recovery program in a southern B.C. community. Part of the proceeds from the beer will be donated to the local food bank.

“It’s an innovative way to deal with food waste,” says Jenna Fraser, Community Food and Outreach Coordinator at Community Connections in Revelstoke.

Earlier this year, Fraser says Food Connect gave 150 lbs of bread, such as kaiser rolls and dinner rolls, to a farmer for pig feed.

“The farmer said he couldn’t keep up with all the bread. He was inundated by it.”

Not wanting to throw away the abundance, Food Connect started to brainstorm for ideas.

The program aims to redirect food from landfills by partnering with restaurants, food retailers, lodges, and local farmers/gardeners. Food that’s either close to or at its best before date, over stoked, mislabeled, “ugly” is redistributed to 18 different programs in Revelstoke including the food bank, school breakfast programs, after school program, women’s shelter, and many other non-profit organizations. In 2017, Food Connect says they received 25,000 lbs of bread. Last Aug. alone, they recovered 2,500 lbs.

“We actually referred to it as bread mountain,” says Fraser.

According to a report by the Commission for Environmental Cooperation, an environmental watchdog agency set up under the North American Free Trade Agreement, Canadians are one of the worst food wasters, with almost 400 kg of food per capita thrown away yearly, costing roughly $30 billion and creating 21 million tonnes of greenhouse gases. Every Canadian, on average, tosses 170 kg of food away a year.